By this time, the early seventies, the Tsar saw that he had not merely to deal with a few unbalanced individuals. The jails were full of political prisoners. All the well-known leaders were in jail or exile, yet the work proceeded amazingly. In 1874 there were 1,500 arrests. The new courts were not called upon to decide the guilt of the prisoners. They were knouted, or thrust into prison, or sent to Siberia. Large numbers died in the overcrowded jails. Some went insane or committed suicide. When the experiment of a public trial was at last made, in 1877, people were amazed at the calm courage and high idealism of the young “criminals.” In 1878 nearly two hundred of them were tried. Many received terms of imprisonment, or penal servitude, of from ten to twenty years. The rebels were now at war with the brutal ministers of the autocracy, and they began to use the same weapons. A young girl from the country came to St. Petersburg and shot the head of the police; and, amidst great enthusiasm, she was acquitted by a jury. Another head of the police was in the same year (1878) stabbed at Odessa. Spies were shot. Groups of young men who were surprised in secret council by the police produced revolvers and fought. The governor of Kharkoff, who treated political prisoners with great brutality, was assassinated. Another attempt was made to shoot the Tsar (1879). In the meantime, it will be remembered, the Russo-Turkish war had occurred, and it had the customary effect of increasing the people’s burden and the discontent. The Slavophile party naturally gave birth to a Pan-Slav party, and the traditional Russian ambition to spread over the Balkans was revived. The Turks continued to treat their Balkan subjects with great brutality, and in 1874 Bosnia and Herzegovina broke into revolt, while Serbia and Montenegro, which were semi-independent, joined with their compatriots in the war. The Pan-Slavs now pressed for war, and there were those in the Tsar’s circle, such as his brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas, who warmly supported the agitation. The financial minister, on the other hand, who had carefully nursed the treasury into something like prosperity, strongly opposed the adventure. The Tsar wavered between his hope of getting the ignominous treaty of 1856 set aside and his love of peace and dread of the costly chances of war.